The Dynamic Should They or Shouldn't They, Who's In Charge Around Here Anyway Thread

[LouisEly]

The worst part about the Greinke trade(s) is how we unloaded so much talent and only got Segura in return. Not surprising though that Doug got fleeced. He seems to always get the bad side in a trade.

 

As for the Sabathia trade and other pitcher related moves, maybe if Doug could actually draft talented pitching we wouldn't have to give up so much. Like drafting Matt LaPorta instead of Madison Bumgarner who went 3 picks after Matt. Once we had already drafted Braun, fielder, weeks why did we continue drafting hitting? And then once we do finally start drafting pitching, Doug whiffs on all the picks outside Jake. 2011 is case and point; we should have drafted Jose Fernandez or Sonny Gray but nope. 2 top 15 picks and nada

As has been discussed extensively here, Fernandez told teams he would only sign with Florida teams (Marlins, Rays) or he was going to the U (Miami). DM said they looked at Bumgarner extensively but they thought his delivery/mechanics would lead to injury. After watching Jones, Rogers, Neugebauer, and Gold go down during his tenure, I don't blame Melvin for being cautious about mechanics and injuries with HS pitchers.

 

Let's stick to discussing our own perspective (unless it is correcting misinformation) and not attack other's perspectives. I think that is the spirit of what splitterpfj intended with this thread.

[Bombers]

The worst part about the Greinke trade(s) is how we unloaded so much talent and only got Segura in return. Not surprising though that Doug got fleeced. He seems to always get the bad side in a trade.

 

As for the Sabathia trade and other pitcher related moves, maybe if Doug could actually draft talented pitching we wouldn't have to give up so much. Like drafting Matt LaPorta instead of Madison Bumgarner who went 3 picks after Matt. Once we had already drafted Braun, fielder, weeks why did we continue drafting hitting? And then once we do finally start drafting pitching, Doug whiffs on all the picks outside Jake. 2011 is case and point; we should have drafted Jose Fernandez or Sonny Gray but nope. 2 top 15 picks and nada

 

That's a lot of misinformation.

 

There are reasons to dislike Melvin but his ability to make trades is not one of them. The only real mistake trades I can think of he's made have been late season relief pitcher trades, like the Broxton deal, or Linebrink deal, or Weathers deal.

 

As for the draft it's usually the scouting director calling the shots. I'd blame Bruce Seid before I blame Melvin for poor drafts in recent memory. Why did we continue drafting hitting? Because it's pretty much BPA for the whole draft, that's how you approach a baseball draft.

 

The little what if game you're playing can be done with every team in every sport and every draft, if only we'd have known exactly who to pick. Give me your predictions for this year's draft and lets see if they all turn out to be super stars.

That's fine, you can blame Seid, and the others who have been in his role. But to say, we missed because we went with best player available, I don't agree with.

 

I look at Ted Thompson who everyone always says drafts the "best player available." But then happens to usually draft the best player available at a position we need. Did he have Haha last year and Randall this year as the best player available at the time we drafted? Only those in the draft room will really know, but I doubt it. More so this year, I doubt Randall was sitting atop of our board. I do believe he was sitting atop the CB board though. We desperately needed one as we saw 2 leave in free agency.

 

I am not involved in the MLB draft process, nor do I follow much of any HS or college ball. But I have a hard time believing it is a complete crap shoot. Now is it blackjack? Sure maybe, I don't disagree that there is a factor of luck, but to say strategy / prospect analysis doesn't play a massive role I would say is undervaluing a good front office. Just like the Packers in NFL, there are some in MLB who are just good at it. To me, the Brewers are not in that camp (Luck or no luck.)

[The stache]

The worst part about the Greinke trade(s) is how we unloaded so much talent and only got Segura in return. Not surprising though that Doug got fleeced. He seems to always get the bad side in a trade.

 

As for the Sabathia trade and other pitcher related moves, maybe if Doug could actually draft talented pitching we wouldn't have to give up so much. Like drafting Matt LaPorta instead of Madison Bumgarner who went 3 picks after Matt. Once we had already drafted Braun, fielder, weeks why did we continue drafting hitting? And then once we do finally start drafting pitching, Doug whiffs on all the picks outside Jake. 2011 is case and point; we should have drafted Jose Fernandez or Sonny Gray but nope. 2 top 15 picks and nada

 

That's a lot of misinformation.

 

There are reasons to dislike Melvin but his ability to make trades is not one of them. The only real mistake trades I can think of he's made have been late season relief pitcher trades, like the Broxton deal, or Linebrink deal, or Weathers deal.

 

As for the draft it's usually the scouting director calling the shots. I'd blame Bruce Seid before I blame Melvin for poor drafts in recent memory. Why did we continue drafting hitting? Because it's pretty much BPA for the whole draft, that's how you approach a baseball draft.

 

The little what if game you're playing can be done with every team in every sport and every draft, if only we'd have known exactly who to pick. Give me your predictions for this year's draft and lets see if they all turn out to be super stars.

 

Doug Melvin has been an assistant GM for 30 years now. 5-6 (off the top of my head) in Baltimore as head of player development and Assistant General Manager. Since then, save for one year where he was in Boston between GM jobs in Texas and Milwaukee, he's been running the show. That's about three decades of assembling Major League teams. Yes, the scouts have major say in who a team drafts, but ultimately a GM buys the groceries.

 

How many bonafide starting pitchers has Doug Melvin drafted in his time as a top executive at the Major League level? You can try to demur somewhat and place the blame on Seid and others, but the one constant in all those years in Baltimore, Texas and Milwaukee is those teams haven't won! And they haven't won because, in order to get quality pitching, they have had to overpay. I've said it before, and I've said it again. And I've done the research. Doug Melvin's teams have won one playoff series in thirty years as a Major League Baseball executive. One series!! One!!!!!!

 

If a GM doesn't have post season success a decade onto the job, ok, well, some prospects might have panned out. Some might have been injured. Still some others might simply not have reached the Majors yet. Two decades in, you're pushing it. Three decades of completely inept baseball...that's a trend. And when teams don't win for thirty years, and those teams have had only ONE thing in common, that person in common has to receive a lion's share of the blame.

 

Who do we fire next? The bullpen catchers? The guys selling cotton candy or ice cold beer? Because it seems that Melvin is pointing the finger at everybody else, but refuses to look in the mirror. And I saw the exact same thing happen when he was in Texas, because I live 15 minutes from the Ballpark in Arlington. I watched him draft power hitter after power hitter in Texas. They had Rafael Palmeiro, Ruben Sierra, Pete Incaviglia, Jose Canseco, Dean Palmer, Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez. They could hit the snot out of the ball. But outside of Kevin Brown and a few others he inherited, I can't think of any really great pitchers that he drafted. Ol' Doug left Texas in 2001. Eight years later, about the amount of time it takes for a new GM to come in, change the direction of a team (trim the fat, make some trades, draft and develop a new waive of players), the Rangers are playing in back to back World Series. The Rangers never sniffed the Series while Doug was there. And we got close once since he's been here. Once in now thirteen seasons. Twice in thirteen years we'll make the playoffs.

 

I'm sorry, but that's not acceptable. Not in the slightest. Meanwhile, Michael Brantley has become a stud in Cleveland. Two of the top three hitters in the American League, Prince Fielder and Nelson Cruz, were Brewers. I didn't blame Melvin for losing Fielder, for what he wanted to be paid. But we sure found the money to waste $9 mil a year on Broxton. How much did we spend on Garza? Then there's Lorenzo Cain, who leads the American League with a 2.8 WAR this far. He's sensational, playing spectacular defense, hitting .311 and on a pace for 30 stolen bases, 114 runs scored and almost 180 hits. Alcides Escobar turns one web gem after another at short. Jake Odorizzi is only 3-5, for Tampa Bay, but he's got a 2.31 ERA over 66 innings. Well, there's a good pitcher we drafted, at least, right?

 

Peralta and Nelson will be good. Maybe after three decades Melvin has finally figured pitchers out. And I'm probably exaggerating some things because I'm sick of this team being inept. I'm sorry, one really great year, and another pretty good year where we squeaked into the playoffs because a Cy Young winner single handedly willed us into the playoffs...doesn't equate to a "great run" in thirteen years. Look where we are now. Worst team in the Majors, and while some of our lower level guys look promising, as of right now, we have the worst farm system in the Majors, too.

 

If we had sold it all and actually won a Series or two, I could forgive our current position. But we weren't even a fart in the wind. One post season series win. That's what Doug Melvin has brought us. You can spin it, look at it from different angles, but that is what we have to show for 13 years of Dougie ball. We should hope to be so lucky to get to two Series 8 years after canning him. If Cruz catches one ball, the Rangers win it all.

 

It's time to cut our losses, dump Doug Melvin, and find somebody who will preach baseball fundamentals. You can win some games when your guys can hit the ball out of the park. But when the bats go cold, as they often do, a team needs to be able to win with pitching, defense, and manufacturing runs. We can't do that. None of it. We have to throw away more runs on the base paths than any other team in the Majors. We have a few good defenders, but the rest are plodding, or have weak arms. And the other starters we have are just....

 

It's time to move on. Cut out this cancer, and give this franchise a new lease on life. PLEASE. For the love of God, enough already!

[danzig6767]

In retrospect, i think it's fair to say that the worst decision of Melvin's tenure was hiring Seid to replace Zduriencik. Jack Z also sucked at drafting pitching, but at least he hit on a bunch of positional prospects.

 

All small and mid-market teams need to be able to both draft well and scout well on the young international market to keep a steady influx of quality young and cheap talent flowing through the team. If that quality cheap young talent pipeline from the minors dries up, it's nearly impossible for lower revenue teams to be consistently good. Just look for example at how St. Louis has drafted compared to the Brewers when it comes to pitching.

 

Hopefully Attanasio cleans house on the front office this offseason, but if he does, the new GM will rightfully so get all of the headlines. Who that guy hires though as his amateur scouting director will only get a small blurb in the paper, but that guy will not be far behind the GM in importance as to well how the team ends up doing under that new GM. Those amateur scouting directors running drafts across baseball are IMO easily the most underrated people in the game and most fans don't have any idea who they are.

[Bombers]

In retrospect, i think it's fair to say that the worst decision of Melvin's tenure was hiring Seid to replace Zduriencik. Jack Z also sucked at drafting pitching, but at least he hit on a bunch of positional prospects.

 

All small and mid-market teams need to be able to both draft well and scout well on the young international market to keep a steady influx of quality young and cheap talent flowing through the team. If that quality cheap young talent pipeline from the minors dries up, it's nearly impossible for lower revenue teams to be consistently good. Just look for example at how St. Louis has drafted compared to the Brewers when it comes to pitching.

 

Hopefully Attanasio cleans house on the front office this offseason, but if he does, the new GM will rightfully so get all of the headlines. Who that guy hires though as his amateur scouting director will only get a small blurb in the paper, but that guy will not be far behind the GM in importance as to well how the team ends up doing under that new GM. Those amateur scouting directors running drafts across baseball are IMO easily the most underrated people in the game and most fans don't have any idea who they are.

For sure. The drafts in 2009, 2010, 2011 were just bad. 2012 (Coulter and Taylor) might be a good one. The success of the 2013 draft was impacted by signing Lohse and 2014 is to recent. Hopefully Ray Montgomery continues his success of drafting well as the dbacks are ranked 6th here. (Ray drafted all of them besides the international signee's)

http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/2015-organization-talent-rankings/

 

Also - Splitter, I am with you. I have been touting that one series win in 25+ years for a while. Doug needs to go and I hope it is this year. I am not sure who they would bring in but at this point we have to hit somewhat of a reset button. (Although Ray Montgomery did well in Arizona so I might keep him around) ... I do not want Doug leading the charge on any type of rebuild

[SomewhereInTime]

Well I'm all for the full rebuild, literally trading anything of value at the deadline and moving on to new management, but I'm just saying Melvin's had a good track record when it comes to trades during his tenure here and I blame a lot of the recent draft failures on Seid. I also think MA does a lot more meddling than he should and that can be seen in the long string of veteran FA Pitcher signings starting back with Suppan.

 

It's not just Melvin that's lead to the looming massive rebuild, there's organizational rot from the owner on down. I hope he does the right thing and wants to rebuild instead of trying to convince everyone again heading into next year that this team can compete and is only a FA pitcher or two away.

[tmwiese55]

Somewhere, isn't Melvin responsible for hiring Seid and overseeing him, therefore it's fair for him to be held accountable for that?

 

I get your point kind of agree it wouldn't be terrible to keep Melvin around for the trades and that since they have shifted their draft/minor league approach that is enough of a change. But it's totally fair to hold Melvin accountable for all the botched drafts

[Point Beer Is Best]

I think the Marcum trade and the Greinke trade are tied together and need to be looked at as one package. I'm fairly certain that it was reported that Greinke only agreed to the trade after he was assured that they weren't going to trade Prince, and was impressed by the move to get Marcum. It's likely that Greinke doesn't agree to the trade if Marcum (or another quality SP) wasn't added before his arrival.

 

If we're playing the "what if" game, the one that eats at me is Jose Abreu. It was reported the Brewers were one of the top teams in terms of money offered. Had they offered a little bit more and didn't sign Matt Garza... would last season had turned out any better? You'd have had a stud at 1B instead of the revolving door they've had since trading Prince, and would have had to have found a cheap replacement for Garza.

[tmwiese55]

Abreu was a bid though I think, so not like it was a negotiation and they walked away from it. If they'd have known the dollar amount I bet they would have done it.

 

Back to the overall theme of the thread. I wouldn't read much into anything for the next month. We'll know in July how serious they are about trades and subsequently the future. If they don't trade Gomez, Lucroy, and Braun (and I doubt they will) I predict a lot of complaining on here about how they need to tear down immediately etc and that management is clueless. I think that would be overreaction as none of these guys are FAs this year. Best value back from Gomez could easily be in the offseason, Lucroy the year after. Offseason gives more time to work for the best deal without the panic of the deadline. I'm just saying to not overreact unless you see extensions come for those guys or something.

 

Also, both aren't exactly playing great right now so giving them the second half of the year to prove they're healthy and hitting might give them a better return. Also with Lucroy, if you wait another year it gives you more time to identify needs in your system (besides pitching) and to evaluate other teams players (basically it gets everyone a year further along to make a smarter trade).

[SomewhereInTime]

Somewhere, isn't Melvin responsible for hiring Seid and overseeing him, therefore it's fair for him to be held accountable for that?

 

I get your point kind of agree it wouldn't be terrible to keep Melvin around for the trades and that since they have shifted their draft/minor league approach that is enough of a change. But it's totally fair to hold Melvin accountable for all the botched drafts

 

True, but with that logic you can always just look to someone elses boss as being the real fault of the problem. If we blame Seid's boss (Melvin) for hiring him and not firing him, then logically you need to look to Melvin's boss (MA) to blame for hiring him and not firing him.

[The stache]

Oh, I give Attanasio plenty of blame, too. Trust me. The way he's sat by with a worthless GM running this team into the ground, hemming and hawing. He takes a good deal of blame, too. He's opened up the wallet more than any other owner Milwaukee's had. That I give him credit for. But a lot of the signings are looking terrible now. Lohse is terrible this year, as is Garza. And Broxton? Really?

[TooLiveBrew]

Yea I forgot Ordazzi

You sure did

[MrTPlush]

Abreu was not a bid...he was Free Agent with no penalties. It seemed like the Brewers were just being used in the White Sox negotiations though. We were basically just bidding up the White Sox.